Margin Creates More In Life

I have been fortunate to be a highly productive individual. I define productivity as output per unit. I can squeeze the maximum output for a given level input from many areas: time, effort, and money. I have had my hand in multiple things simultaneously as well as a few things. In a society where busyness is not just expected but celebrated, productivity, despite technological advances, has dropped. Sure, we can do more now then we could a few years ago, but what we could do relative to what we have is getting worse and worse. Reflecting on my 30 year work career, I have found that margin is crucial to productivity.

Margin has several definitions. Margin in business is measured as the difference between revenue and expenses and less frequently referred to as profit or net income. Margin is also the amount of white space around the text on the page. The dictionary calls margin a border. In this article, I define margin as the difference between capacity and usage.

Time and money are the two most abused areas regarding margin. People rarely have extra in either. When margins disappear, problems arise. The slimmer the margin, the less variation is acceptable. Any hiccups get magnified when margins disappear.

Take traffic as an example. As road capacity is reached, almost anything can drastically slow traffic: roadkill on the side of the road, a car tapping the brakes, bad weather, or an emergency vehicle on the side of the road. Worst case is an accident in the middle the road. Traffic can be stopped for hours! However, as space increases between vehicles, hiccups cause no problems at all. That’s is the power of margin.

That’s the same in life. The less margin, the more potential for a massive slow down or a complete stop. I am a big advocate for thinking time. You can call it solitude, meditation or whatever; but it’s time where you can process information mentally. What I’ve discovered in the past two years is unprecedented.

Unlike my high energy, overbooked past, I took a radical turn to huge margin. It has given me a freedom unlike anything I’ve experienced. The two areas were money and time. I took major steps in each to cut the spend/activity in half.

It was tough at first, of course. It felt highly restrictive and like I was doing anything. However, like the highway at rush hour, my mind–as creative as it is–was being held captive. I didn’t even realize it. Cutting back paid dividends. The added capacity supercharged my life.

It allowed me to invest time and money not just in the now, but more critically for the future. My innovation productivity took a major leap upward. I thought at a higher and more strategic level than ever before.

It’s not popular and people think it’s counter-intuitive but margin can help you before more productive than you’ve ever been. We don’t need to continue to advance to get less and less productive. We need to advance and be more productive. We should be able to get the most out of life, not have life take the most out of us.